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Enterprise MobilityRedefining the Workplace
Naeem Zafar
Co-founder & CEO-Bitzer Mobile
Tuesday, July 30, 2013
Bitzer Mobile, Inc. is a provider of infrastructure software for enterprises to use on-premise or as part of cloud computing environments. Headquartered in Sunnyvale, the company has raised $4.75 million funding from Acero Capital and Chevron Technology Ventures.

For the last few hundred years, humans have gotten up every morning, jumped into an ill-fitting suit and fought through traffic just to arrive at a building called "office". Why? Because that is where all the business data existed and that is where the people that worked with it were located as well.

But the recent technological revolution of mobile devices such as smart phones and tablets, and the availability of new applications for mobile communication and collaboration have changed the way we regard the concepts of "office" and "work".

A New Way to Live and Work

Enterprise mobility has finally delivered the holy grail of workforce - the fact that work and personal life can coexist and enhance each other and not be mutually exclusive in terms of time as well as space. This dramatic change will have a profound impact on how we live, work, earn and play as a society. Today’s mobile devices are the physical representation of this shift and offer the potential to hold work and personal transactions in one portable device.

Applications such as the FaceTime, Skype and WebEx have all been a part of our lives for some time making it possible to work and interact from anywhere, anytime. Cloud is making this ubiquitous access even easier but the most sensitive data still sits on-premise, which limits access to this data due to concerns about security and authorized access. However, things change dramatically once data is protected so that it can leave the confines of the building to be consumed securely at the end point of a mobile device. This independence from location can usher in a major shift in the way business is done.

A handful of visionary enterprise mobility companies have made it possible to unleash the data and the people sitting behind desks in brick-and-mortar offices.

Now, the introduction of the enterprise mobility software to mobile devices has made this fundamental shift possible by enabling workers to access data, applications and documents all in real time irrespective of location. This starts a shift towards business agility, efficiency and productivity while addressing the security and control of this data from corporate IT.

Use Cases

Consider a doctor who needs to make a remote patient visit. She can diagnose the patient based on call notes from the nurse over the phone, access the patient's case history as well as health-insurance details, obtain the patient's consent signature and decide the treatment; and she can accomplish all of this using her tablet. She may even do a video call with the patient without having to make the patient drive to her office and wait as she attends to all her other appointments.

A social worker who usually goes door- to door taking pictures, collecting information and then coming back to the office to type and upload all the information can now go to the field with a mobile device and upload all the information to a server securely as she goes through routine.

Doing it Right

As new companies deliver the enterprise mobility solutions we must consider the critical factors that shape the right solution which will meet the needs of its users:

1) User experience (UX) is critical. If users have to go through many steps to use the solution the adoption will be slow and users will find alternatives. UX derived from multiple elements that include how you authenticate, how you enter the password among other things. It is not cool, for instance, if you have to enter 6 to 8 digit password every time you pick up the phone. Smart mobile apps should know where you are; whether at work, home or a new location. The app should escalate the method of authentication based on your situation and not demand unnecessary steps that can ruin UX.
2) Remote control of corporate data: The right solution should isolate personal and corporate data. This is where an information "container" helps on the mobile device. This can enable the IT department to lock or wipe this container with a remote command from a management console. These security policies can be applied if the device is compromised or lost.
3) Creating an ecosystem for enterprise app developers: Allow developers to create apps unhindered by the concerns of security, encryption and authentication. It allows them to develop robust, cool apps without having to worry about security as these apps can then be simply added to the container and data security and policy control can be exerted remotely by the mobility solution console.

Mobility is the new frontier and these three aspects of mobility form the territory on which businesses operate for better productivity and improved bottom-line. We saw how iPhone changed the way we did business. That is just the start of a new revolution and we have only seen the tip of the iceberg!


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